A NEGLECTED POINT IN HUME'S PHILOSOPHY.
IN Section II, Part IV, Book I, of the Treatise of Human Nature, Hume raises the following question: "How can we satisfy ourselves in supposing a perception [sensible object] to be absent from the mind without being annihilated?" (p. 495 ).[1] He answers: "We may observe, that what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united together by certain relations, and supposed, though falsely, to be endowed with a perfect simplicity and identity. Now as every perception is distinguishable from another, and may be considered as separately existent; it evidently follows, that there is no absurdity in separating any particular perception from the mind; that is, in breaking off all its relations, with that connected mass of perceptions which constitutes a thinking being. ... The same continued and uninterrupted Being may, therefore, be sometimes present to the mind, and sometimes absent from it, without any real or essential change in the Being itself. An interrupted appearance to the senses implies not necessarily an interruption in the existence. The supposition of the continued existence of sensible objects or perceptions involves no contradiction. We may easily indulge our inclination to that supposition. When the exact resemblance of our perceptions makes us ascribe to them an identity, we may remove the seeming interruption by feigning a continued being, which may fill those intervals, and preserve a perfect and entire identity to our perceptions" (p. 496). And a little further on he says: "This propension to bestow an identity on our resembling perceptions produces the fiction of a continued existence, since that fiction, as well as the identity, is really false, as is acknowledged by all philosophers" ... (p. 497). Again, referring to the same belief, he says: "Tho’ this opinion be false, 'tis the most natural of any, and has alone any primary recommendation to the fancy" (p. 500).
- ↑ The page references are to the Green and Grose edition.
